Lawmaker sees issue through undocumented past

Susan Carrollnews@conexionsa.com

Published
1:03 am CDT, Thursday, June 2, 2011

State Rep. Ana Hernandez Luna stood before the House on the afternoon of May 9, hours after lawmakers passed the controversial “sanctuary city” bill, and started reading from a prepared statement, her eyes downcast.

“Immigration and all that it encompasses is very personal for me because I was an undocumented immigrant,” Hernandez Luna, 32, said in a halting and teary speech. “You may prefer to use the word illegal alien, but I'm not an alien. I am not a problem that must be handled. I'm a human — a person standing before you now as a representative for the Texas House.”

With her roughly five-minute speech, she did what some would consider crazy in the current political climate. She tried to put a human face — her own — on the illegal immigration issue.

“I believe they have a perception of what an undocumented immigrant should be, and I don't fit in that,” she said in a recent interview. Some of her colleagues across the aisle were unmoved — at least from a policy perspective. They have a firm hold on the House and had overwhelmingly passed HB 12. The bill, which ultimately failed to make it through the Senate, would have kept local governments from prohibiting their police from enforcing federal immigration laws.

“I admire the difficulties that she has overcome,” said state Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, “but I still stand strong that we have got to protect our borders. We need to enforce our laws.”

Hernandez Luna said her parents packed up a single suitcase and brought her to Houston from Reynosa, Mexico, as an infant, along with her 4-year-old sister. They overstayed their visitor's visas, and lived undocumented for eight years.

Her parents paid taxes, she said, and bought a house in Houston within about five years. She remembers fearing as a little girl that her mother would be picked up by immigration agents staking out the local Fiesta grocery store, or that her father would not come home after one of his overnight warehouse shifts.

Celia Fleischman, principal at Gardens Elementary School in Pasadena, said she remembered Hernandez Luna struggling with her English, but quickly catching on. Her mother worked in the school cafeteria, and Hernandez Luna would come in early and sleep in the corner, waiting for school to start. She always had her nose in a book, and was ready to speak up for others, Fleischman said.

“She was very smart and opinionated, even as a little girl. I know why now,” Fleischman said with a laugh.

She remembers her parents' relief when Congress, under President Reagan, passed the 1986 amnesty that granted legal status to an estimated 3 million illegal immigrants. As her family sank deeper roots, opening their own restaurant at a flea market, Hernandez Luna graduated from high school at 16, gained citizenship at 18, attended the University of Houston and interned at the state Capitol. Out of college, she spent two years working at the Capitol before enrolling in the University of Texas School of Law.

Not long after starting her first job as a lawyer, one of the legislators she had worked for, Rep. Joe Moreno, died in a car accident. His staffers and supporters asked her to run in a special election for his seat, she said, and she took an eight-month, unpaid leave of absence to campaign.

She handily beat her opponent, and at age 27, she started representing District 143, a solidly working-class, predominantly Hispanic neighborhood that sprawls alongside the Houston Ship Channel east of downtown.

Her immigration history didn't come up during the 2005 campaign, she said.

“I've never hidden the fact that I was born in Mexico. It's on my bio, ‘born in Reynosa,'” she said. “At the time I ran in 2005, we really didn't have that anti-immigrant sentiment.”

For now, her attention is largely focused on bread-and-butter issues. Immigration enforcement is a federal issue, not one for state legislatures, she said. She remembers bristling the first time she shared her immigration story with fellow lawmakers, at a late-night committee meeting in 2007, when Riddle, the Tomball Republican, said something to the effect of, “You've been given a gift from God.”

“My response to her was, ‘I haven't been given anything. My parents and I have worked very hard for everything I have been able to achieve and accomplish.'”

Riddle remembers it slightly differently.

“I told her she had been blessed, yes indeed,” Riddle said. “When somebody says that they're blessed, that doesn't mean that they're laying under a shade tree sipping on lemonade and the blessings just fall on top of them.”

On one point, the two lawmakers agree: the issue comes down to opportunity. But they remain worlds apart on who is entitled to it.

“I'm grateful for the opportunity that I've been given, and I think it is incumbent upon me to ensure that others have that opportunity,” Hernandez Luna said. “We're not giving anything away. We're giving you the opportunity.”